Bill Haley and the Comets: Thirteen Women (1954)

Graham Reid | Nov 11, 2013 | <1 min read

Talking to Memphis writer Robert Gordon recently about his forthcoming -- and excellent -- book on the famous Stax recording studio in his hometown, I was reminded of just how often hit songs were on the flipside of singles. Green Onions for Booker T and the MGs on Stax among them.

Back in the days when disc jockeys had control over their own playlists they would frequently flip a record over to hear what was on the other side. (Today radio programmers are given playlists by some Central Committee and daren't deviate.)

Then when talking with Bill Haley Jnr about his father and the biography he is writing -- intended publication date next year, the 60th aniversary of Rock Around the Clock -- he reminded me that Haley's seminal hit had also been a flipside.

The original single had Thirteen Women (And Only One Man in Town) on the A side and it wasn't until someone flipped it over that Rock Around the Clock was discovered.

It wasn't a hit immediately but when it appeared in the film Blackboard Jungle that party song became instantly associated with juvenile delinquency and the rock'n'roll era.

But initially it had been buried behind Thirteen Women, the song posted here.

For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory use the RSS feed for daily updates, and check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.

Who said the gay power movement lacked humour? Quite the opposite in fact, and humour is a powerful weapon.
This one-off appeared on the Harvey Kubernick-curated double album English as a... > Read more

Elsewhere at Elsewhere

You would be forgiven for thinking that
a film about piano tuning would be enough to test the stamina of even
the most hardened cinephile, but despite the rarefied world in which
Pianomania is... > Read more

At some time in the mid Nineties when I was working in Parnell, there was an open air carpark just off the main road. The back wall was perhaps two storeys high and painted white.
One day,... > Read more